Kindle Notes & Highlights
And since that counsel was concerned mainly with three big issues, namely, the Mediator by whom the salvation had to be earned, the Holy Spirit by whom it had to be applied, and the people to whom it had to be given,
He is not in the usual sense of it the founder of Christianity, but He is the Christ,
Christ is Himself Christianity.
It is true that this people repeatedly makes itself guilty of disloyalty, falling away, and a breach of the covenant over against the Lord. But precisely because it is a covenant of grace, the disloyalty, the unfaithfulness, of the people can do nothing to invalidate the faithfulness of God. The covenant of grace is from the nature of the case an eternal covenant which reproduces itself from generation to generation.
The kingdom of God is not a poetic figure or philosophical concept but is a reality, a component part of history. It comes from above, is spiritual, ideal, and nevertheless comes into being in time under a king of David’s house. It is a kingdom of God and yet is a thoroughly human, earthly, and historical kingdom.
Hence the future kingdom of God is painted for us in prophecy in tints and colors taken from the circumstances then extant, which are not to be taken in a literal sense, but nevertheless give a deep impression of the reality of that kingdom.
He came to preach and establish is at the same time internal and external, invisible and visible, spiritual and physical, present and future, particular and universal, from above and from below, coming down from heaven and yet existing on the earth. And Jesus will return. He came to preserve the world, to save it; He will return to judge it.
If Jesus had done no more, consequently, than assume the human nature and so give expression to the unity of God and man, it would be entirely beyond comprehension how we could enter into fellowship with Him and be reconciled with God. Rather He would, by assuming a sinless human nature and by living in an unperturbed fellowship with God, have introduced further division among us, have plunged us deep under the sense of our helplessness, inasmuch as we, weak, sinful creatures, could never follow in His high example anyhow.
Just so the apostolic preaching rather rarely goes back to the conception and birth of Jesus, but puts all emphasis upon the cross, the death, and the blood of Christ. It is not by the birth but by the death of His Son that we are reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10).
